Apologies for the slightly melodramatic title, but I found another gem in Patrick Holford‘s advice on allergies: “[i]f you are in the midst of an allergic reaction, take three times this amount [of supplement pills] for short-term use only.“
As I’m sure my readers are bright enough to know, allergic reactions can be serious (and fatal). For example, the BBC website has a nice clear description of anaphylactic shock:
In extreme cases, large quantities of an antibody called immunoglobin E are produced, which cause a variety of effects on the body’s cells and tissues.
In particular, it causes the body to release an excess amount of histamine, a dangerous chemical.
The resultant, and usually very swift, effects are muscle contractions and swelling, often closing the throat, making it difficult to breathe.
Sufferers may also experience abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea. Immunoglobin E expands blood vessels, causing a drop in blood pressure, which leads to fainting or unconsciousness.
Hopefully no-one would be daft enough to follow Holford’s advice in this situation (his advice to up your dose of supplements just leaves me with an image of some poor sod with a severe allergic reaction struggling to force down vitamin pills – while their throat swells up and they become unable to swallow or breathe…) If someone is going into anaphylactic shock, you obviously need to call an ambulance ASAP (and the patient may also have adrenaline on them, to take in the event of a serious reaction). If you suspect your suffering from allergies, you need to see a proper doctor for a diagnosis (if you haven’t already done this).
At any rate, if your throat’s swelling up quickly enough that you struggle to swallow vitamin pills, that’s a pretty good sign that you should forget about the vitamins and get proper medical treatment ASAP…
Clearly you are right that anaphylactic shock is not the time to be taking vitamin pills – and I am sure that Mr. Holford would agree with you. Dietary and supplemental input takes a minimum of days and usually weeks or months to have an effect.
Anaphylaxis, however, does not by any means cover all allergic reactions – many of which are less severe and over a longer time scale.
This ‘howler’ is nothing but a straw man. You have particularised Holford’s advice to a specific example to which it is clearly not applicable – for the reasons you ably describe – and then used this specific, which is obviously absurd, to attempt to knock down the whole.
It seems to me that you are clearly looking for holes to pick here.
Hedley- thanks for the feedback. This was intended to be a slightly light-hearted post (something hard to get across in print). We do analyse Holford’s claims re. nutritional treatments for allergies in more depth, and more seriously, elsewhere.
In this post, I was trying to make a serious point (albeit in a slightly sarcastic way). While allergies can be life-threatening, and should often be taken very seriously, Holford’s article made no mention of many of the potentially serious consequences of allergic reactions. Holford should – I would argue – have made clear to readers that for certain allergies it is very important to seek the advice of a qualified doctor or dietician, instead of just self-treating with supplements and dietary changes.
To make matters worse, Holford suggests that people “Get tested for food allergies” but, instead of suggesting a means of testing for IgE reactions, links to IgG blood tests. If someone relied on these tests to rule out an IgE food allergy, this could have serious consequences.
In other words, I did therefore have a serious – and, I believe, valid – point to make in my post. Sorry if this didn’t come across at all well.